Army Archerd Passes Away

One of the original tinsel-town gossip columnists, Army Archerd, has passed away at 87, after more than half a century of chronicling the doings of actors, actresses and entertainment moguls.

Often political but rarely confrontational, Archerd was less famous for dishing the dirt than for breaking stories. He demanded exclusives from his sources - and, because of his enormous power as a popular columnist for the show-biz bible Variety, he got plenty of scoops.

Grounded in the old-school journalism ethics of the wire services (he started with the Associated Press in 1945), Archerd nevertheless socialized with his subjects, entertaining classic movie stars and their wives at his home, and often became part of the story, appearing as himself in hundreds of radio shows, movies and TV bits.

His greatest contribution as journalist may have been his straightforward handling of the disclosure that classic movie star Rock Hudson was dying of AIDS, a story that raised awareness of the disease in the 1980s.

Archerd's breathless, breezy writing style has long since faded from fashion, but it was fun -- Variety has excepts in its Army Archerd archives.

The columnist in 2006, by David Livingstone/Getty Images